Going Mobil

This Super Bowl lived up to the hype and not just because my team won. If the NYGs can win a Super Bowl, the Vikings sure can, too.

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What some folks consider to be Minnesota’s temple of fine dining, La Belle Vie, was just awarded four stars in the Mobil Travel Guide. As far as I can tell, this is the first time that a Minnesota restaurant has been listed in that guide. For some perspective: There are 149 four-star restaurants and only seventeen five-star restaurants on the MTG list. This year’s Mobil Travel Guide is the fiftieth anniversary issue, and for the first time, it awarded five stars to hotel properties in Wyoming and Utah. The Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole and the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City were both added this year. Additionally, two other properties are appearing on Mobil's five-star list for the first time: the Boston Harbor Hotel and The Sanctuary on Kiawah Island in South Carolina. Three new restaurants earned five stars in the current guide: the Georgian Room in Sea Island, Georgia; The Inn at Dos Brisas in Brenham, Texas; and Le Bernardin in New York. That fact that Le Bernardin did not received five stars last year or the year before is a joke; but there is no time like the present.

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Raising Cane’s, which serves some killer chicken fingers, has opened a Stadium Village location. Thank God because I live about four minutes away, and the haul out to Apple Valley was getting tiring.

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According to Tim Manners’s Cool News:

Tim Hanni is a recovering alcoholic and former wine snob whose goal is to "get more Americans to drink wine," reports Katy McLaughin in The Wall Street Journal (1/19/08). Tim's idea is "that no one has a palate superior to anyone else's, and that there's nothing wrong with liking wines many experts consider tacky, like White Zinfandel. He also thinks traditional tasting notes comparing wine to berries or chocolate are useless in helping most consumers find wines they enjoy." Tim's perspective is unusual not only because he is a recovering alcoholic but also because "he was one of the first two Americans to hold the highest credential in the field, Master of Wine."

Getting that credential involves a "four-day exam and dissertation ... with challenges such as identifying the region, production method and alcohol levels for wines from a blind tasting." It's precisely because of this credential that Tim has the credibility to advance "two radical new ideas to the wine trade." The first idea is what he calls "the progressive wine list, a menu that arranges wines in order from the lightest to the heaviest." He's categorized some 80,000 wines, and his database is now in use by "30 percent of casual and upscale chains" and "about four-percent of fine dining restaurants, including Nobu in New York."

Tim's other idea is something he calls the "budometer," a questionnaire "which consists of a series of questions about a drinker's preference in coffee, beer, cocktails and soft drinks" purported to "predict what kind of wine the person will like." And if that doesn't work, he has yet another idea -- Tim claims that adding some salt and lemon to food will make it go well with just about any wine. Based on this, he's created a condiment called Vignon. Such innovations are most welcome by the $27.8 billion U.S. wine industry, where "only 17.8 percent of American adults drink wine once a week or more."